DONETSK: Pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine named a leader of a breakaway republic yesterday after weekend elections which was denounced by Kiev and the West and further deepened a standoff with Russia over the future of the former Soviet state.
Organisers of the vote said that Alexander Zakharchenko, a 38-year-old former mining electrician, had easily won election as head of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”, an entity proclaimed by armed rebels in the days after they seized key buildings in cities of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east last April.
A rebel representative said Igor Plotnisky had won a majority in a similar election in Luhansk, a smaller self-proclaimed pro-Russian entity further east.
The rogue votes, which Kiev says Russia encouraged, could create a new “frozen conflict” in post-Soviet Europe and further threaten the territorial unity of Ukraine, which lost control of its Crimean peninsula in March when it was annexed by Russia.
Burkina Faso army to hand over power
OUAGADOUGOU: Burkina Faso’s interim President Isaac Zida said yesterday that the army would quickly cede power to a transitional government headed by a consensual leader, in a bid to calm accusations that it had seized power in a military coup.
On Saturday, the military appointed Lieutenant Colonel Zida as interim head of state in a move criticised by opposition politicians, the African Union and Western powers seeking a return to civilian rule.
“Our understanding is that the executive powers will be led by a transitional body but within a constitutional framework that we will watch over carefully,” Zida told a gathering of diplomats and journalists in Ouagadougou.
Agencies
